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"In France, Derrida capitalized on the structure of the intellectual market by targeting his work to a large cultural public rather than to a shrinking group of academic philosophers. His work appealed to the intellectual public as a status symbol and as a novel and sophisticated way to deal with late 1960's politics. In the United States, Derrida and a group of a prestigious literacy critics reframed his theory and disseminated it in university departements of literature. His work was imported concurrently with the work of other French scolars with whom he shared a market. Derrida's support is more concentrated and stronger in one discipline than the support for other French intellectuals. In America, professional institutions and journals played a central role in the diffusion of his work, while cultural media were more central in France." (p.584)
"How can a French philosopher gain acceptance in the land of empiricism ? More generally, what are the conditions under which a cultural product becomes defined as important ?" (p.585)
"Intellectual legitimation is defined as the process by which a theory becomes recognized as a part of a field -as something that cannot be ignored by those who define themselves, and are defined, as legitimate participants in the construction of a cognitive field. I contend that the legitimation of interpretative theories does not proceed from their instinsic value but results from coexisting, highty structured interelated cultural and institutional systems. I also argue that legitimation results from two distinct but simultaneous processes : 1) the process by which the producer defines himself and his theory as important, legitimizing and institutionalizing this claim by producing work meeting certain academic requirements, by making explicit his contribution to a cognitive field, and by creating research teams, reseach institutes, journals, and so forth ; and 2) the process through which, first, peears and, second, the intellectual public define and assess a theory and its producer as important and, by doing so, participate in the construction of the theory and the institutionalization of that theory and its author. [...]
The second objective is to understand how an interpretative theory may become legitimized among various audiences whose norms of evaluation differ. Several authors have noticed and critized the transformations of theories introduced into new cultural milieus [...] I argue that the intellectual legitimation of a theory in differend settings depends on its adaptability to specific environmental requirements, which permits a fit between the work and specific cultural and institutional features of various markets. I show that the legitimation of Derrida's work in the United States was made possible by its adaptation to existing intellectual agenda and by a shift in public from a general audience to a specialized literacy one." (p.586)
-Michèle Lamont, "How to become a dominant French philosopher : The case of Jacques Derrida", American Journal of Sociology 93, 1987, no. 3, pp.584-622.
